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Here Wii go..

The big hit at home this summer has been the Nintendo Wii. In fact, it has kept us all (not just kids) occupied for far too long. For me Nintendo has (for quite a while) delivered consoles with really interesting user interfaces which I think should have loads of potential in education and training scenarios. The Wii is no exception and using the Wii Remote is a completely different experience to traditional gaming controllers.

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The Wii Remote has motion sensors inside and this is what makes the Wii very different from other gaming platforms that I at least, have seen. Using this technology, games are available that let you swing a golf club, baseball bat, tennis racquet, pitch a baseball or bowl a tenpin bowling ball for example. This adds an extra dimension to the game experience. In other games you will wield your remote as a sword or other implements. Additionally, the remote can be used as a pointing device as well to point at objects etc on the screen. These functions enable really interesting scenarios to be built into games and must have some potential in learning. Watching how quickly children can familiarise themselves with the interface is amazing and it is my guess that the Wii would lend itself very well to educational scenarios for younger audiences. I found that the remote was very good for big movements such as emulating swinging a tennis racquet but less responsive for smaller movements such as putting a golf ball. It could be quite frustrating at times with smaller movements although that may just be a reflection of my ability. However, such inconsistencies would require careful consideration if the technology was used to simulate something in a training environment which required a reasonable degree of accuracy. The Wii can also access the Internet to get to services such as the weather and news. These are accessed through 'Wii Channels'. At last check, the weather channel was operational but the news channel hadn't started yet. If you take the time (and it did take some time) to download a browser you can also access the Web. The browser is currently in beta and is the Opera browser. I understand it will be available for free for a whille but eventually there will be a cost. Connecting to the Internet was very easy (even with my wireless network which surprised me a little). Using the Wii to browse the Web is probably something that I will do very little of however. Using a virtual keyboard is tedious and the screen resolution is not that good and this becomes quite exaggerated on larger screens. The store where I purchased the Wii from believed that at some point in the future, there is likely to be integration with the Wii and other Nintendo devices such as the DS. If so, this would just add to the possibilities that designers can work with. Unfortunately, I don't know whether these technologies will ever be exploited for adaptation to training/education environments though which seems a bit of a shame.

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